Hartley and his wife, Miho Nikaido, travel to Japan to see her parents and reflect on 12 years of marriage, her career ambitions, and the adventures of growing older.

An artist-criminal far from home asks his assistant to pirate a rare videotape before the German Post Office Authorities come to confiscate it.

A short film about friendship, disillusionment, loathing and despair, in which the pictures of three young men talking are juxtaposed with slowmotion shots of aggressive dogs. Three young men are talking about Richie's marriage to Evelyn, which has put their friendship on the back burner. Richie explains how that could happen. "She fell for me, and they hate me for it", he says. Everyone was mad about Evelyn, but Richie makes it clear that their marriage is not exactly a bed of roses. He admits that be bluffed and lied and more or less asks his friends for forgiveness.

The job, should you choose to accept it: two young women playing out roles associated with the purchasing of real estate. Questions regarding the worries of ownership versus the worries of being un-invested. Intimations of a life filled with effort and debt. Tie this all together somehow with lines from the song “Iris” by the Breeders.

Joseph Fulton, a well-regarded fifty-eight-year-old director of romantic comedies, wants to become assistant groundskeeper at a local cemetery. He wants to work outdoors and be close to nature. Meanwhile, he thinks it’s important to have his last will and testament drawn up. But his highly dramatic actress girlfriend thinks he must be dying and that he is just too brave to tell anyone. The rumor spreads and soon everyone he knows—and some he doesn’t—are crowded into his small apartment to say their last farewells.

ife is so tough in the big city that our hero has to run a gauntlet of assailants just walking to work. Once there, blasé urban hipsters drop philosophical bombshells like cigarette ashes on a carpet. A leather-jacketed artiste of some sort or another, his figure endures the perils of fame, from glib arse-kissers to critics who throw literal punches instead of derogatory adjectives. Its absurdity peaking in a ballet of slo-mo slapstick, this very funny, distinctively Hal Hartley short weighs the value of ambition. Its verdict? Meh. - Dennis Harvey

This short film was packaged on video with Hartley's featurette "Surviving Desire." It affectionately examines the lives of a group of "young, middle-class, white, college-educated, unskilled, broke, drunk" Brookylnites who would love to make something of their lives -- assuming they can pay the rent first.

Two charming but inept agents of the supernatural (sort of like cupid goddesses) decide to interfere in human affairs. Mini Musical Comedy. Like one of those Shakespeare situation comedies in the woods. Or the Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour." A mini-opera with some sort of dense but ultimately meaningless plot. There's a young man who works too much and who needs to fall in love and a young woman in similar straits on the far side of the forest. The goddesses split up and attempt to cast spells on the mortals. But one of them, while casting a spell calculated to make the man fall in love with the first girl he sees, bungles the job. He falls wildly in love with her instead. She tries to escape but he steals her roller blades, without which she cannot return to the spirit world. Lot's of running around, mistaken identities, everyone gets lost, some arias, later... The goddesses do somehow manage to bring the two overworked mortals crashing into one another's arms and to retrieve the supernatural roller blades. We'll figure that out later.

It is March 1 1994 and we see four characters while New York is under attack.

A slow, meditative piece of visual music commissioned by the Paris Gallery of the Foundation Cartier for their group show, "Amours." Different artists, filmmakers and writers were asked to make something treating the concept of "amour" (or "love"). Hal Hartley decided to treat that aspect of love which is charity and deconstructed the well known phrase from the gospel of Mark regarding "turning the other cheek."

Two students and their teacher seem to be literally fighting over the proper solution to a complex mathematical equation. Is it the key to time and space or a coded instruction manual about their own secret urges? An alchemical action movie? A real life cartoon with original music by Dutch heavyweight Louis Andriessen. Hal Hartley fashioned this whimsical piece of fight choreography with three of his recent performer/collaborators: Miho Nikaido, David Neumann and DJ Mendel.

A hot summer day on a country road. A young woman in her bridal dress gets kicked out of a car. Lost and frustrated, she wanders off across a sea of grass into a dark wood - and discovers an abandoned house. Tired and worn out, she lies down on a bed. When she is awakened from her nap by a clap of thunder, she sees a cup of steaming hot tea and a package on the floor. She opens it - and finds a kimono. The bride knows she no longer is alone ... but should she put on the kimono?

"No Such Thing" tells the story of a young journalist who journeys to Iceland to find her missing fiancée only to encounter a mythical creature. She eventually forges a relationship with the being.

In this darkly comic retelling of the Apocalypse, Jesus (Martin Donovan) arrives at JFK airport with intriguing assistant, Magdalena (PJ Harvey). While the world ponders the meaning of this second coming, Jesus battles the Devil for human souls, risks the wrath of God, and struggle with himself over whether these lives are worth saving. The Book of Life presents an unrelenting kaleidoscope of fast-moving images and hear-pounding music that perfectly captures a techno-driven, computerized, and postmodernist world.

A comic drama about a time in the near future when citizens are happy to be property traded on the stock exchange.

Meanwhile concerns Joe Fulton, a man who can do anything from fixing your sink to arranging international financing for a construction project. He produces online advertising and he’s written a big fat novel. He’s also a pretty good drummer. But success eludes him. For Joe can’t keep himself from fixing other people’s problems. His own ambitions are constantly interrupted by his willingness and ability to go out of his way for others.

Jude, a college literature professor, falls for one of his students. She is more interested in the empirical experience of a relationship with a man whose life is ruled by the themes of the Russian Lit. he extolls in class. Jude shows an interesting side of the stigmas associated with transgenerational relationships and how to deal with the inevitable pain of a love doomed to failure.

Many years after her notorious husband, Henry Fool, fled after killing a neighbor, Fay Grim receives a visit from CIA agent Fulbright, who tells her that Henry is dead, but that some of his journals have been unearthed in France. She sets forth on a globe-trotting odyssey that soon leads to the discovery that he is alive, and his journals are more than they appear to be.

1994 film by Hal Hartley